paying taxes via credit card -- plastiq.com

plastiq is a service that has recently been introduced in canada. it has a simple idea: if you are being forced to pay for something online via debit or cash, you can now pay for it with credit card via plastiq. the merchant has probably elected not to use credit cards because of the processing fees that mastercard / visa / amex charge (around 2-5%). plastiq lets you pay for the item but instead will charge you a flat transaction fee of 2%. they promise that it counts as a purchase, not as a cash advance which would accrue interest charges immediately.

this, in itself, is not that exciting. if you use a points credit card and you get one point per dollar spent, you're ending up paying an extra 2c per point. it's not that great a deal. how it is helpful is for helping one meet minimum spending targets. for example, the starwood preferred guest american express will give you a free weekend award night after spending $40,000 a year. what if you're expecting to be shy of that number at the end of the year? you may need to manufacture a little bit of extra spending in order to reach that threshold. this is where plastiq comes in handy.

i did my taxes online with h&rblock.ca again this year (thanks to my $7 coupon code from pcfinancial). this time, they announced their partnership with plastiq, saying that you could pay your taxes online. i figured it was legitimate enough and i wanted to test it out.

1) this was the initial webpage after paying my taxes. i clicked the orange tab.

 2) this is plastiq's landing page. the next page asks you for your canada revenue agency details, the amount owed and credit card details.

 3) review and submit your payment. note that the math was correct in terms of the fee.

4) after hitting submit, you get to see a confirmation that your payment has been completed. they e-mail you a receipt and a transaction number that you can follow up with.

easy! i'll check back to make sure that it works, of course. i'll also be keeping an eye out to make sure that none of it is treated like a cash advance. if it works out, then this will be a great tool to generate additional spend on my cards in order to meet minimum thresholds.

just as an aside, the amount that i owed was $1,203.29. i paid $1,227.36. using my 2% cash back card, i expect to $24.55 back in rebates. so the actual amount that i paid in taxes was $1,227.36 - $24.55 = $1,202.81. in other words, i actually saved $0.48. just a small detail, of course ...